Smoking opponents generate new heat

Business lobby has tougher foe in Wilmette vote

November 10, 2003|By John Keilman, Tribune staff reporter.

When word got out in August that Wheeling's Board of Health was working on a smoking ban, the village's restaurateurs leaped into action.

They protested to the village president, held one-on-one meetings with trustees and enlisted the aid of the powerful Illinois Restaurant Association to spread the message that a ban would hurt business. The proposal died before it could come up for a vote.

It was a textbook lobbying effort, one the restaurant industry has perfected in its mostly successful battle to kill indoor smoking ordinances in Illinois. But now it is running into equally determined foes.

Wilmette's Village Board could vote Tuesday on a smoking ban that would be the toughest in the state. Proponents of the measure are distributing yard signs, packing public hearings and flooding elected officials with hundreds of e-mails.

They're also pointing to documents that link the Illinois Restaurant Association to the tobacco industry. It is one of the most aggressive efforts yet to pass a local smoking ban, and it has anti-smoking activists hopeful that the tide has turned.

"It's easier to find concerned citizens who are willing to pick up this issue now than it was five years ago," said Joel Africk, a Wilmette resident and CEO of the American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago. "What we see now is people saying, `Yeah, I want a sign for my lawn,' or, `Yes, I'll stand in front of my child's school and hand out fliers.'"

Restaurateurs have always led the charge against indoor smoking laws, saying they drive away customers. It's an argument that has usually swayed decision-makers.

"Our Restaurant Row is a very vital part of our economic development in our town," said Wheeling Trustee Dean Argiris, whom restaurant owners called within minutes of learning of the proposed ordinance. "To put a real strict smoking ban in effect was ludicrous."

Last week, Wheeling trustees told the Board of Health to work on an educational campaign to deter smoking voluntarily.

Donovan Pepper of the Illinois Restaurant Association said that's the right way to handle smoking concerns. The increasing number of smoke-free establishments and ever-shrinking smoking sections show the issue can be handled without regulation, he said.

"That's the marketplace working," he said. "That's choice. It's smokers who don't have much of a place to go."

While Pepper maintains that bans hurt businesses, restaurateurs outside of Illinois who have confronted the measures give varying accounts.

Establishments popular with smokers in Montgomery County, Md.--perhaps a third of restaurants overall--have seen business drop by as much as half since a ban took effect last month, according to the Restaurant Association of Maryland. But California and New York restaurant groups said they've seen little effect from bans.

Illinois restaurateurs who have fought the bans usually have succeeded, halting proposed measures on the state level and in many towns around Chicago. Even Skokie, which in July passed a comprehensive anti-smoking ordinance, moderated it under pressure.

"I'm sure you could easily conclude that the restaurant industry had an influence," said Skokie Health Director Lowell Huckleberry.

Proponents of the Wilmette ban have highlighted documents uncovered in tobacco litigation that show links between the Illinois Restaurant Association and cigarette companies. Those documents were made public in the deal the tobacco industry reached with attorneys general nationwide in 1998.

One RJ Reynolds e-mail indicates that an industry operative worked with the association to combat a smoking ban proposed for Wilmette in 1998. A Philip Morris letter from the same year says the company gave the association $23,000 to fund a survey of attitudes on smoking.

Pepper said he wasn't familiar with those documents but that the association today does not get aid from tobacco companies to battle smoking bans.

Wilmette officials said they have been deluged with e-mail. Village President Nancy Canafax, who hasn't decided how she will vote, said the pro and con messages are about even.

"The citizens who are against smoking today are much better organized than they were five or six years ago," said Trustee Yip-Wah Chung, who supports banning smoking in restaurants.

While that's good news for anti-smoking advocates, some say they're still the underdog.

"I think that [the restaurant and tobacco industries] will remain formidable," said Janet Williams, spokeswoman for the Illinois Coalition Against Tobacco. "They've got deep pockets and they're not going away any time soon."